Ultimate Judgment : A Story of Emotional Corruption, Obsession and Betrayal
When millionaire shrimping magnate Donald Sahlman died of cancer in November 1992, his friends, family and business associates crowded into a church in Tampa, Florida to mourn a man who was gentle, generous and compassionate. But their benevolent image of Sahlman was about to be shattered. In a case that would shock all who knew him and set a legal precedent, Sahlman was put on trail and posthumously charged with the heinous sexual abuse of his stepdaughter.
This is a gripping story documented with actual court transcripts as Clairmonte details the sexual and emotional abuse she suffered at her stepfather’s hands for twenty-five years. Perhaps even more shocking are Clairmonte’s allegations against her own mother, who conspired in the abuse and even facilitated it, selling her daughter into sexual and emotional slavery for financial security. In this precedent-setting court case, Sahlman’s estate was ordered to pay Meg Clairmonte $3 million. This riveting story is one of emotional corruption, obsession and betrayal at their darkest levels, but more importantly, it is the story of human courage, resilience and ultimate triumph.
Author: Meg Clairmonte
Paperback: 465 pages
Company: HCI (2001-02-01)
ISBN: 1558748318
List Price: $12.95
Amazon Price: $60.25
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U.S. Intervention in British Guiana: A Cold War Story (The New Cold War History)
In the first published account of the massive U.S. covert intervention in British Guiana between 1953 and 1969, Stephen G. Rabe uncovers a Cold War story of imperialism, gender bias, and racism.
When the South American colony now known as Guyana was due to gain independence from Britain in the 1960s, U.S. officials in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations feared it would become a communist nation under the leadership of Cheddi Jagan, a Marxist who was very popular among the South Asian (mostly Indian) majority. Although to this day the CIA refuses to confirm or deny involvement, Rabe presents evidence that CIA funding, through a program run by the AFL-CIO, helped foment the labor unrest, race riots, and general chaos that led to Jagan’s replacement in 1964. The political leader preferred by the United States, Forbes Burnham, went on to lead a twenty-year dictatorship in which he persecuted the majority Indian population.
Considering race, gender, religion, and ethnicity along with traditional approaches to diplomatic history, Rabe’s analysis of this Cold War tragedy serves as a needed corrective to interpretations that depict the Cold War as an unsullied U.S. triumph.
Author: Stephen G. Rabe
Paperback: 256 pages
Company: The University of North Carolina Press (2005-10-25) (2006-02-23)
ISBN: 0807856398
List Price: $19.95
Amazon Price: $18.00
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Seductive Poison: A Jonestown Survivor’s Story of Life and Death in the People’s Temple
Deborah Layton was, by her own account, a typical rebellious youth, with nothing in her dossier to indicate that she would eventually find herself in Jim Jones’s People’s Temple in Guyana, looking for a way out of the green hell that had become the People’s Temple Agricultural Project. She barely escaped in June 1978. Within months, more than 900 people drank Jones’s cyanide punch and committed “revolutionary suicide” in the face of mounting stateside pressure on the cult, some of it prompted by Layton’s own testimonials upon her safe return home. Her brother, Larry, also survived, and as one of the few left alive in Guyana became a scapegoat for Jones’s crimes; he is now serving a life sentence in federal prison.
There is a simple naiveté at the root of Seductive Poison. Layton’s own youthful innocence, foremost, but also the desire to trust another person, the need for belonging and meaning, which led so many perfectly normal Americans to place their faith in a suicidal madman. Far from confirming the simplistically monstrous Jones of the public imagination, Layton paints the man as a dark, twisted shaman, by turns soothing, then suddenly malevolent and petty, with a hugely sadistic streak that belied his perfectly coifed hair, expensive suits, and impressive political connections. The scenes in which she describes her escape and flight to safety are wrenching, her last-minute conversation with Jones and his seductive appeal for her to return home to Jonestown are chilling, and her fear and indecision are still palpable on the printed page. For Layton to recount tales this personal and horrifying must have been tremendously difficult. For her to lift those recollections above the bargain-basement freak-show reputation the People’s Temple has achieved in the popular imagination and depict them with the power of great tragedy is nothing but extraordinary. –Tjames Madison
Author: Deborah Layton
Paperback: 368 pages
Company: Anchor (1999-11-09) (1999-11-09)
ISBN: 0385489846
List Price: $14.95
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Dear People: Remembering Jonestown
More than a quarter of a century after the fall of Peoples Temple, in which the world witnessed the devastating loss of over nine hundred lives—including those of Congressman Leo J. Ryan and several journalists—the tragedy of Jonestown continues to mystify. In a sensitive account that traces the rise and fall of the idealistic community movement that preceded the deaths at Jonestown, Denice Stephenson uses letters, oral histories, journal entries, and other original documents—many published here for the first time—to bring this inexplicable event into a very personal and human perspective.
-Coincides with the premiere of the new play “The Peoples Temple” by writer/director Leigh Fondakowski (The Laramie Project)
Paperback: 171 pages
Company: Heyday Books (2005-04) (2005-04-01)
ISBN: 1597140023
List Price: $16.95
Amazon Price: $8.66
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Bush Pilot In Diamond Country
Author: Donald Haack
Paperback: 376 pages
Company: Pure Heart Press (2004-07-30)
ISBN: 1930907494
List Price: $16.95
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John Eisenberg, a leading researcher of Neotropical fauna, begins the volume with a discussion of historical biogeography and contemporary habitats of the northern Neotropics. Each of the chapters that follow presents a mammalian order, with data for all indigenous species. Eisenberg has provided physical descriptions and summaries of range and habitat for nearly 450 species. For those species that have been studied in the field or in captivity, additional notes on natural history are included. For the larger taxa, field keys to help to identify the specimens. Range maps, line drawings, and color plates supplement the text, further aiding identification.
Throughout the book, Eisenberg provides a larger context for the species descriptions. He comments on the diversity of forms within each order, places the Neotropical species in a worldwide geographical perspective, and reviews taxonomic questions and controversies. At the end of each chapter, an extensive bibliography directs readers to related articles on systematics, behavior, ecology, and evolution. Eisenberg concludes with chapters on speciation events and mammalian community ecology.
No comparable account of South and Central American mammals has ever been published in any language. This volume of Mammals of the Neotropics and the forthcoming companion volumes will be an invaluable reference for students and professionals and will help further the research that is so vital to conservation efforts.
Author: John F. Eisenberg
Paperback: 550 pages
Company: University Of Chicago Press (1989-05-15)
ISBN: 0226195406
List Price: $59.00
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